Psychedeliology (HALLUCINOGENS) Part 2 with Charles Grob 01:06:42

I know I usually save my secrets for the end of the episode, but I'm going to tell you my secret favorite candy. It's Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

It's really Reese's anything. But Reese's peanut butter cups are the thing that I'm like, have I had a bad day? I get these. Have I had a good day? I get these. Chocolate, salty peanut butter, the textures. I love everything about them. Also that there's two. So I'm like, oh, I get this one for later, which is one second later. Anyway, Reese's peanut butter cups. I love you. That's all. If you're me, you can shop Reese's peanut butter cups now at a store near you. Found wherever candy is sold. And I am.

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Okay. Once again, it's the lady eating berries off a bush in the park, Allie Ward. Here we are, part two of an episode, six years in the making. Go back to part one if you didn't start there. You'll get all the basics. Do you want to start?

Do one and then you do two in that order. Okay. So we are talking psychopharmacology, neurobiology, psychology, traumatology, and so much more with one of the leading experts in the field of psychedelics and hallucinogen research. So in part one, we learned about the chemical structure of hallucinogens, what receptors and networks of the brain they work in, and if hallucinations are dreams, neuroplasticity, psychosis risks, secret CIA shenanigans that killed individuals.

even one of its closest allies, so much more. And in this episode, we're going to talk about how hallucinogens are administered in the safest medical settings.

different strains of mushrooms, decriminalization status, some recent rulings. We'll talk about cultivation, dimensions. What's reality? How does one avoid barfing? And so much more. But first, a huge thank you to patrons of Ologies who pay $1 or more a month and submit questions for the show beforehand. These are wall-to-wall your questions. You can also support Ologies by wearing an Ologies shirt or a tote. You can tell a friend.

Those shirts and totes are available at allogiesmerch.com. Or for $0.00, feel free to leave us a review because they boost the show so much and they make my day. Such as this new one from Wildflower Soul, who works at an animal shelter. And while listening to the Capybara episode, quote, it awakened a primal feeling in my guinea pigs. And they all started hooking along like they were capybaras. They were living their wild lives. Thank you. Everyone else?

Life's short, summer's here, cut banks, text your crush, consult a doctor before doing any drugs. Let's get into it. Okay, so this very first question was all about access. Maureen Flood asked, how long until we reach the point of being able to prescribe these to patients? Sarah Metzger and Johnny Clark asked, what is your professional opinion about legalization? Kelly Dooling, Gregorius of Tomsk, Adam T. Burns, Emma Scott, and

Brennan Hicks, all wanted to know about legalization. And Brenna wrote, just this week, the FDA ruled against MDMA for treatment of PTSD. Do you think this ruling will affect the outcome of similar studies for shrooms? So let's A your cues about set and setting, decriminalization, stoned ape theory, fMRI studies, neurodivergence, astrophysics, how to be a good trip sitter, and my own experience following clinical guidelines for a big trip and more of your questions within

a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and the director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Harbor UCLA Med Center, co-editor of The Tome, The Handbook of Medical Hallucinogens, and psychedeliologist Dr. Charles Groh. ♪

A lot of people wanted to know about access. People wanted to know what's your opinion on legalizing all hallucinogenic mushrooms. How do you feel about Oregon recently legalizing it? Where are we at with it? If someone wanted to do this, like my psychiatrist was like, just get a hold of some. I so far haven't been arrested for talking about it. Right, right. Nor have I. Knock, knock. Well, also this whole situation maybe has changed in the last week, given what we're learning about the MAPS vaccine.

hearing at FDA. It was very, very negative. They were highly critical of MAPS. So will it extend over to psilocybin? I don't know. So MAPS, side note, stands for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. And it's this nonprofit. It's based in the US. And it focuses on research for MDMA for PTSD, ayahuasca for addiction and PTSD, medical cannabis, LSD, and psilocybin for anxiety and depression. And

And just days before we sat down to record this, an FDA panel rejected research for MDMA-aided therapy for PTSD, which is a huge blow to researchers and psychedeliologists, if you will. And according to this recent New York Times article about it, the panel wasn't convinced that the benefits outweigh the risks in MDMA-assisted therapy. And they cited these potential cardiovascular effects, but

but also called into question how blinded the methodology is, given that subjects can usually tell whether they have been given a dud or whether they are chewing their cheeks and rolling on Molly in front of a guy in a lab coat. So it was a 9-2 vote.

Total bummer. And other experts and cheerleaders of this therapy, including some sexual assault survivors who showed up to speak about how revolutionary the therapy was for them, have been pretty disappointed. Now, it should also be noted that the FDA doesn't regulate talk therapy at all. So it's a tough thing to regulate and it's a tough thing to study. Now, what does this mean for access to hallucinogenic or psychedelic therapies?

Now, criminalization varies not only country to country, but state to state and city to city. Now, Oregon's decriminalization law went into effect in January 2023. And Denver has a green light. And California passed some resolutions in Santa Cruz and Berkeley and San Francisco marking psychedelics as the lowest law enforcement priority. They're like...

Don't worry about it. Now, back in 2019, Oakland passed a similar resolution stating that no city funds or resources can go to the enforcement of laws imposing criminal penalties for the use and possession of entheogenic plants by adults. So some places are more loosey-goosey than others when it comes to eating 60 million year old fungus that you can pick out of a cow patty if you know what you're doing.

I am very interested in seeing what happens with Oregon. My admonition to them would be, be as careful as you can and pay attention to safety parameters and keep an eye out for ethical improprieties because that'll bring the whole house down. These are such valuable experiences. They're the gifts of the gods. They come to us from the earth.

And if used wisely, in a proper context, with proper oversight, and in moderation, not taking that heroic dose, most people, not all people, most people weather the experience fairly well with a lot of important knowledge and insight. It's interesting. If you had told me when I was in high school that there'd be weed stores everywhere and yoga moms selling THC tinctures, I would have not believed it. So it's interesting to see how much

The legalization of marijuana in so many states might pave the way. However... When is like Merck and Pfizer going to come in and want a piece of it? The problem with marijuana legalizing is we now have to also deal with the synthetic cannabinoids. We need to deal with this kind of the free base product

I've seen people get quite psychotic, especially young people who were predisposed to manic depressive illness. They would get manic, they get psychotic. And it wasn't with smoking, just weed per se. - Now, Dr. Grob said there's also laboratory synthesized cannabinoid,

spice, it's called, which seems very on the nose, or there are strains treated with a solvent to create a wax, and their strength is often vastly underestimated in case you're looking to elevate your heart rate or have a massive panic attack, if you or me. But when it comes to psychedelics... So one thing I think that's

desperately needed in Colorado and Oregon is good public education. This isn't going to be open to the public. There are going to be a lot of people who don't know much of anything about this. They need

They need to be instructed. Ideally, you would have legally sanctioned centers to facilitate psychedelic experience in the presence of trained and certified facilitators. Right. Josie Rutherford and Jasmine Leo wanted to know about potential negative effects of

like remembered trauma, falsely or truthfully remembered. And Brooklyn Barron, Laura Wood, April Carter, and Julia Lorraine asked, in Julia's words, I'm so excited for this. Okay, can you ask the ologist about the incidence of psychosis induced by psilocybin and also if there are ways to prevent it? Some folks wanted to know,

How would one know before if they embark on this if they would be prone to psychosis or prone to a manic?

Or what about your biological family history, your biological genetic history? If it's loaded with people with bipolar disorder, there, I believe, is significant risk. Now, they may weather it just fine, but they're at higher risk than the next person who did not have such a history in his or her family. And if you're looking for someone to evaluate if this might be a good option for you, how does one go about that?

Now, some patrons, Jasmine Alexandra, Angelica Stanley, Eva Haisova, and Kate Munker and Waylo asked if it's safe to self-administer either unaccompanied or with a

friendly trip sitter or are there other researchy means to do it? Lau wanted to know where can you find a trained medical doctor or clinical trial to join or a sitter? Yeah, that's a tough one to answer because I guess it's legal now in Oregon, as far as I'm aware, and it's approaching legality in Colorado. I'm not sure where they are with that process, but outside of those two areas,

Like you, you had to play your luck out in the open. Yeah, talk to your friends. Meet someone in a parking lot. Walk through the woods. I saw this great, you know, Paul Stamets, the famous ethnomycologist. So I'm going to talk about it. He had a great slide of a rural Oregon police station. And it was this expansive front lawn. And it was...

proliferating with psilocybe mushrooms. So how did they get there? Was it the spirits directing the spores to settle down there? Or did you have some wise guy kids who thought this would be a lot of fun to do? Just confiscated mushrooms just for like, this is a good place.

And last week, we talked about how CIA operations to use LSD as a truth serum or in warfare disproportionately experimented on people of color, sometimes in cruel and inhumane ways. And in the paper, Don't Kill My Buzz, Man, Explaining the Criminalization of Psychedelic Drugs, political scientist Conrad Sproul of the University of Oregon explains that in 1968, the

Possession of LSD was banned by the U.S. federal government. In 1970, there was this Controlled Substances Act that classified LSD and other psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, signifying that they had no medical potential and the highest possible potential for abuse. And then in 1971, through the U.N., psychedelics were placed in the strictest category, like abuse.

Above cocaine, alongside heroin. And these bans largely arose from this fallout with MKUltra discussed in part one and this type of moral panic that was counter to the counterculture of the hippie or now boomer generation.

who were not keen to go fight in wars, they did not agree with. They rebelled against that, and then this moral panic began. And Sproul continues that no discussion of drugs in the U.S. can be complete without addressing race, which has been entwined with drug rhetoric forever.

from the beginning, they write, and that the racialization of the drug problem and the resultant harm to communities of color has only increased with non-white defendants convicted of drug crimes at massively disproportionate rates, Braille notes. And in case you do not live in the United States, let me just remind you that our healthcare systems and our prison systems are for profit. So it does pay to do drugs, but it just pays somebody else.

Well, Matt Ciccato and Josie Rutherford, Aaron White, Megan Morgan, all had questions. Do shrooms have to be grown in the wild and harvested, or can they be farmed as such? No, they can be cultivated. In fact, the ones who developed the first procedure for this were the McKenna brothers back in the early mid-'70s.

So just a quick side note, Terrence McKenna was this mystic and ethnobotanist. And after trips to the Amazon, stumbling into this field of psilocybin mushrooms, he worked with his brother to cultivate them using just home DIY equipment. And in 1976, they first published the Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, which was this seminal handbook that changed the accessibility to hallucinogens. You could just grow them in the garage. And he took a lot of trips. He wrote a lot about mind expansion,

Some theories about time being fractals and the world and time ending in 2012. Unfortunately, he was not here to see that it's pretty much the same, but worse, as he died of this aggressive rain tumor at the turn of the century in 2000 at the age of 53. But Timothy Leary said that he was one of the most important people on the planet because of Terence McKenna's work in cultivating them.

And so I understand that there's like golden teacher and there's penis and even those are like different strains of mushrooms. Do any of them have an effect? Some people wanted to know, like Megan Morgan wanted to know how are doses determined? Well, you know, you like to take

a compound where there's some history of people having experience with it. That way you can gauge what the proper dose is. If it's super potent and will trigger a massive reaction at only two grams of mushrooms, you want to contain the dosing. On the other hand, if they're old and they're kind of stale and they've been exposed to the elements and they're not as strong, it may take, you have to be careful about this, but it may take a higher dose.

So if you've ever tried to dive into this world and you're like, what's with the golden penis teacher? I'm confused. Let's run it down right quick. So there are different strains of the same species of psilocybin mushroom. And the most common strains are golden teacher, which has a slim stalk and an umbrella cap. It's said to be more gentle, kind of a more introspective experience. Penis envy is a very dong looking shroom.

clearly. It has a thick stalk and a little phallic hat. And according to one independent lab, the penis envy strain had double the potency of their golden emperor, which was a derivative of a golden teacher. So different strains can vary. And for Libby Tomko, who asked, do the stalks versus the caps really have a difference in potency? I've heard the caps are significantly stronger. The research team found that the cap of the golden emperor mushroom was more potent than the stem, but it was the inverse for the penis envy strain.

that had a more powerful shaft, if you will. So tip the cap to them for studying that. And how they're cultivated can also make a difference apparently. And there was this thing called the Psychedelic Cup Competition. It was held last fall in Denver, of course. And different species and strains were awarded with things like the most enviable or potency. And one microbiologist shared the growing hack that water-absorbing packs, kind of like what you find at the bottom of like a beef jerky pouch,

bit bigger, can help keep mushrooms more potent as water breaks down psilocybin. Noting that blue streaks on your stalks means psilocybin's breaking down and you've kind of already lost it. What?

So yes, first time question asker, Renee Wenger, who wanted to know, is there a shelf life and what happens if they go bad? How do they go stale? Because I was microdosing with some old ones. It didn't feel much. I had a friend. We got some. They were very well done. I gave a little bit to a friend. Again, please nobody arrest me. And she did like a gram and she was like, I was stale.

like tripping. She's like, I think these are really strong. But where does the potency go? Yeah, what are the conditions that impact potency? Dave Nichols, who's kind of this eminent medicinal chemist or natural products chemist, maybe the world's leading scientist in this area, you know, he talks, if you want to

keep them fresh. You keep them in a dark, cool environment. So that means if you expose them to sunlight, just leave it lying around, and it's maybe the climactic conditions are kind of hot and humid, it's likely going to lose some of its potency. And in a 2020 study, Stability of Psilocybin and its Four Analogs in the Biomass of the Psychotropic Mushroom Psilocybe Cubensis, researchers stashed

some shrooms in different conditions and found that after a week, things were still pretty fresh. The changes in concentrations were negligible. But after two months and on of storage, nearly all of the alkaloids were reduced. And the bags that fared the best were stored in the dark at around 20 degrees Celsius or room temperature. But don't store them too cold.

because fresh mushrooms frozen to negative 80 degrees Celsius or negative 110 Fahrenheit had the highest degree of chemical staleness, if you will. Also, I learned in this episode that psilocybin mushrooms have been around for about 65 million years.

Kind of coinciding with the timeline of the great asteroid that killed the dinos and the K-Pg boundary layer. And the alkaloids that trip us out may have been selected through evolution because of insect or gastropod munchers. But evidence on that is debated. What is not up for debate?

is that most people don't want a bad trip or a kaleidoscope of brain terror. And patron Maria Whamond has said that they've heard horror stories about getting stuck in a bad trip. And Josie Rutherford, Connie Connie Bobani, Tom Brody, and Kevin Wildermuth asked about the old set and setting, meaning mindset and going into the good one and setting as in an environment that feels safe and secure, as well as. Raina, Becky, the Sassy Seagrass Scientist, Abby, and Maria Whamond, a lot of people will

also wanted to know about set and setting, but Raina wanted to know what happens during a bad trip or Abby wants to know, does a bad first trip mean you're doomed to never have a good trip? Like what is that and setting? What I teach, you know, I'm actually talking on occasion with some of the young psychiatrists at UCLA who are very interested in this. And I tell them, and I was actually able to demonstrate it once when we did an experimental session with a patient. If someone starts to get very anxious about,

very agitated and somewhat disoriented, like what happened with this a few months ago with a subject. The most helpful thing you can do, you get their attention and you say, I know you're having a challenging experience right now, but you need to know this is time limited, that if we just wait for, you know,

some minutes or maybe a couple of hours, you will return to your normative sense of self. Because the scariest thing in a bad trip is, oh my God, I've done something to myself. I will never be myself again. I will never find myself again. So it's important to dispel that. And so we had this subject who was getting, you know, the model was,

It was open label, so we knew what they were getting. The first session, he got 10 milligrams. As we covered in part one, a big trip is about 25 milligrams of straight, synthesized, standardized psilocybin in pill form. And a microdose, on the other hand, would be maybe three grams.

So 10 milligrams is between a giant and a tiny dose. This is a depressed patient. And a month later, he got 25. And my junior associates were, after the first session, which the guy did great, they said, oh, this is a snap. And I said, no, wait for session two. 25 milligrams is going to be far more challenging. And it certainly was. And so he stood up. He's kind of frantic looking around. It looks like he's feeling trapped.

And one problem was between where he was sitting and the door, I was sitting. So he would have to go over me. I didn't want that to happen. So I figured time for me to talk. So I gave him my rap and it helped. It's going to be okay. You'll see.

Then he calmed down, sat down. A couple minutes later, big smile, and he said, this is great. I can see so much. You know, someone told me before mine, if you start to get scared, think of it like a sign to go toward that thing and investigate it and be curious. Ask it. If you see something scary, think of it.

like a monster or something, ask it, what can I learn? What can I learn from encountering you? What can you tell me? What do I need to know? That's what Ralph Metzner used to teach. He was one of the most esteemed authorities in this area that I've known. He was a great friend. He died in

I think 2018 or so. He was a master at guiding people through these experiences. And if you got into a scary place, don't run away. That'll just intensify the fear. Yeah. Head towards it in a calm, deliberate way and ask,

May I have your attention? And what can I learn? What do you have to teach me? And then it's remarkable what starts to happen. Yeah. It's a good allegory for life, too. If something starts to intimidate you, it's maybe a sign. Like, if you're scared to do something or anxious about something...

looking at that of why am I scared of this is always good. Now, a lot of you shared the question, will I cease being me in the moment or after? Why are they potentially life alterating in beautiful and sometimes dangerous ways with patrons like

Luke LaFemina asking, will it actually make me unsad? And these changes were also on the minds of Chelsea Wick, Daniel Opdahl, Natalie Rousseau, Maria Jurev-Leva, Roy DeMersam, Tyson Quist, Pavka34, Lin-Lin Huang, and Carly Delson, along with... Jadine Lannan wanted to know, what is psychedelic-induced ego death? When people talk about ego death, what is that? Well, ego is our sense of self. And on some occasions...

particularly early on, particularly with a high dose, people feel that their sense of self is fragmenting. And they kind of lose that sense of continuity with who they are. And it's felt to be an integral part of the death rebirth process. Again, you can see our episodes on thanatology and quasi-thanatology if you have a lot of existential dread around death. We

We also have one on quantum ontology with an astrophysicist who asks, what is real? And we have a scotohylology one with a dark matter expert. All of those really changed the way I viewed being alive and being dead, as did my trip. But what does a psychedeliologist think of these aspects?

Kardej Tagahashi asked, is there any evidence of hallucinogenic therapy patients discovering connections to a spirit realm and bringing back divine messages for the betterment of humanity? Is there evidence of that? And Annabelle and Jasmine Lee, they both wanted to know. A few people asked about dimensions. Annabelle asked, do mushroom trips open us up to...

other dimensions? What even is objective reality? Oh, well, hopefully you won't question it too much because we all have to come back to normative consciousness and function. Yeah. So we don't want to get too carried away with just how strange and unusual this is. But you have a little glimmer. You have a period of time, you know, maybe some minutes, maybe some hours where you can look into the other side.

And sometimes astonishing things happen, like your approach by a deceased relative, close relative. Yeah. Maybe one where there was some unfinished business or some questions you needed to ask. Yeah. Has it made you start to question, what is time? Is time even linear? Like, I interviewed a quantum ontologist who studies what is real. He's an astrophysicist. Uh-huh. And just about how much we don't know. Yeah.

Does your experience of watching other people and having gone through it yourself, does that make you question how much we know about reality? I mean, there are some astrophysicists and the like who got their insight while on psychedelics. Kerry Mullis.

who invented these genetic screens. - Just a side note, Carey Mulls is a 74 year old biochemist who spent a lot of his undergrad lab hours at Berkeley making LSD in the lab. And he said that his trips were more impactful than any coursework he'd done. What happened to this guy? Oh, on LSD, he visualized the mechanics of PCR testing and later won a Nobel Prize for it. In real life, that wasn't a trip.

A very prominent individual. He was on a documentary basically saying, I took LSD, and that's when I saw this happening. It's kind of like the discoverer of the benzene ring, a 19th century German chemist, Kekele, who had a dream of a snake, and then the snake bites the tail of another snake, and they keep biting the tails until it's a six-sided snake.

Physicist Richard Feynman was also said to dabble. I'm sure he was not alone in his field. Nuts. Yeah, so that's interesting. So the physicists, I think they're very engaged with this.

I'm sure some of the more prominent physicists had some first-hand experience. Did Stephen Hawking? I don't know, but you never know. I know that Carl Sagan was quite impacted by psychedelics. His best friend growing up was Lester Grinspoon, a Harvard psychiatrist who wrote a great book called Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, published in 1980, and it was basically a compilation of all the psychedelic research that occurred up to that point. Lester

told me, and he also spoke publicly, that his good friend Carl Sagan had a number of psychedelic experiences, which are of great value to him. That makes sense. That makes sense. And what if your brain is already a little different? Lizzie Booth wanted to know how hallucinations affect people with ADHD or other neurodivergent people. Mycologist, Tony Wildman, Peregrine, Eva Haisova, Rube, Eating Dog Hair for a Living, Kelly McCain, and...

Arandani Mueller, first time question asker, wanted to know a little bit, as an autistic person, I'm fascinated by how physical difference in the brain structure, such as reduced neural pruning, manifest. And I'm wondering, they say, if those brain difference produce different effects and trips. I know you've studied MDMA in autistic people. Anything that you observe doing those studies in terms of...

Well, I think we had some success in treating their incapacitating social anxiety. These are adults on the autism spectrum, very bright. A bunch of them had done well academically through high school, then went off to college and completely collapsed and couldn't handle, really, the social scenes, the social pressure. So they went home and couldn't get out of their room. We saw with our patients who received two experiences that

that they were able to move beyond that incapacitating social anxiety and function, get back out in the world, get degrees, get jobs. It was actually quite impressive. And I think it really tells us that there's a...

It opened me up to the neurodiversity movement, that we shouldn't necessarily pathologize people with autism, that they just have a different style of understanding and living in the world, and we need to learn from them. Yeah, for sure. And for more on this, you can see his 2018 paper, Reduction in Social Anxiety After MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy with Autistic Adults.

a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot study, which found that participants in the MDMA group, which was administered twice during two eight-hour sessions, showed a significant improvement on Leibowitz social anxiety scale scores, and it held up or continued to gradually increase even six months from the trial. Is there any way to study if...

something changes structurally or chemically in people who trip. Like I imagine putting someone who's tripping on mushrooms in an fMRI machine would be a little bit challenging for some people. That would be very challenging. There's some scary stories about, about someone kind of getting very anxious asking to, uh,

be removed from the scanner, and then saying he didn't want to go back in, and getting a lot of pressure from the investigators that he did need to go back in because he would hurt science if he did it. That's not a good story. What a guilt trip. Guilt trip to back in. But I think that's a very challenging place. You hear that clanking noise. You're immobilized pretty much. It's very claustrophobic, psychedelics.

can be challenging under the most optimal condition. Yeah. Putting them in an MRI scanner. Yeah. That's not an optimal setting. Terrifying.

Emily Hebert, Hannah Haram, DTL 101, Caitlin Tyndale, Julia S., Trevor Ogborn, Josh Jones, Megan Morgan all had nausea or why does it affect my guts or body in rumbly, tumbly ways? Joe Porfito wants to know, not asking for a friend, but the nausea. I will sometimes consume with food and I think it helps. And Bethany B. had a culinary query asking, can certain foods or drinks, eating them during or prior, affect the way the experience goes?

people asked about why does psilocybin make people nauseated and why does acid, like something acidic,

change how it affects you. Yeah, yeah. I really haven't observed a lot that much in the way of GI symptoms. People who've taken psilocybin, I've had subjects tell me that taking the synthetic psilocybin felt like a cleaner experience, like gastrointestinal-wise, than eating a mushroom. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Where I hear much more about GI effects is ayahuasca.

Oh, God. Yeah, I have friends that have done that. That's very challenging. Yeah. But it's an important part of the process. And they don't look at it as vomiting, you know, which is bad. We look at it as we're conditioned to look at it as a bad thing. They look at it as a purge. Yeah. La purga, you know, where they will get rid of all the negativity. They visualize all the negative stuff they're getting out of their system. Yeah. Yeah.

I know someone who facilitates those, and she was talking about just like the sweet sound of people barfing into buckets means that they're like healing. Yeah. That's a real reframe, and that's great. But then what people need to understand is at a certain point when you're retching repeatedly, you've already brought up everything there is to bring up, but you still have this retch reflex. You've got to use a little willpower to stifle it. Yeah. And to just settle back down because –

you know, you're, you're on a loop. It's not of any value to you and it's disruptive to other people around you. I remember encountering a little bit of nausea and I remember having read, like, just tell yourself like, it's okay. It's okay, body. We can keep this in. It's chill. It's medicine. Don't worry about it. It's okay to let it out too. Okay. To let it go. I wonder too about animals, Francis Hearst Brubaker and a bunch of people.

Jamie, Denny, Ryder, Tiger, and Hazel, first-time question asker. Wanted to know, do animals react to psilocybin? Well, there's a book in the 80s or early 90s by a UCLA psychologist named Ron Siegel.

And that was the whole premise of the book, which was to make observations of animals in the wild, you know, accessing psychedelic plants and then making observations. Siegel was a little controversial, but I forget the name of the… I'll look it up, yeah. Yeah, Ron Siegel.

That book was called Fire in the Brain, Clinical Tales of Hallucination. And just as a side note, Ron Siegel was considered by Oliver Sacks and many others to be one of the foremost experts on hallucinations. And as a psychopharmacologist living in LA, he was a witness in the trial against actor Robert Blake, who was accused of hiring someone to kill his wife. And

And sometime during the testimony, Dr. Siegel discussed the use of drugs on mental states and casually revealed that he had been able to teach monkeys to smoke crack cocaine. So I guess brains just say yum, yum, yum, chemicals wherever you go. But what other risks are there?

And we'll get to that right after the break. But first, each week we donate to a cause of theologist choosing. And this week, Dr. Charlie Grobe chose Human Rights Watch, which is a nonprofit composed of about 500 people of over 70 nationalities who are country experts, lawyers, journalists, and others who work to protect the most at risk from vulnerable minorities and civilians in wartime to refugees and children in need. So that is Human Rights Watch and a donation was made possible by sponsors of Ologies.

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Sometimes you gotta stop and smell the roses. Sometimes you gotta stop and record the snoring. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's hard to make time for it. And when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. So if you are thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient and flexible. I love everything about it.

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Okay, back to your questions about risks. This one was asked by Jocelyn Vincent, Kathleen Carson, Rube, Ashley Adair, Devin Naples, and Aaron Wilgemuth. So let's take a listen.

Una Trevanovic wants to know, what are the risks associated? Like, is microdosing safe for the brain? Like any, I think people who are interested in this are like, what's the worst that could happen? Do I need a warning? I think it's good to approach this with a fair degree of caution. And we don't, we're still trying to learn about it. You know, so the worst that could happen is somebody,

getting disoriented, losing their sense of calm and containment, running out of a building into the street. I was consulted on a case at a big East Coast university where a young guy, I think he was 19, who had evidently never taken a psychedelic and no psych history, got a hold of some mushrooms and on an impulse took a substantial dose. He then went walking around the very crowded area

streets. It was crowded with people, really loud, a lot of noise and construction going on, and just total hell to be out there. And he had some friends with him who didn't really know what he was doing. Just jumping in with a trigger warning slash spoiler alert about a 2003 self-harm incident that was later ruled by medical examiners to be an accident and not

So then he ended up going into the student library where a week before another kid had gone up to a high floor and had jumped to his death. This kid didn't know the other one, but he knew the story. And he went into the elevator. His friends followed. He went up to like the 10th floor.

And he walked over to the railing and looked over. Then his friends were getting very anxious. So they dragged him back, dragging him back to the elevator. But he broke free. And he just vaulted right over the railing and took a 10-story chair.

Oh, God. That's the worst thing that could happen. Terrible. Is that evidence of psychosis? Do you think that's what that was? He got disoriented. He got disoriented. He got very anxious. He lost his sense of self. Yeah. But psychosis, it could have been a transient psychosis. His reality testing was disturbed. But chances are, if he had been in a setting where people knew what he was doing and they could contain him, he could have gotten through that pretty quickly. Yeah.

gotten to the other side and been calm and contained and not put himself in any seriously dangerous situation. Yeah, yeah. That's trip-sitting important there, I imagine. Yeah, yeah. That's an important role. That's a lot of responsibility. Yeah. For a 79-page guide on how to conduct a trip

like the research psychiatrists do. See the Yale Manual for Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy of Depression, which notes that beforehand, the session preparation checklist is room decor, like arts and plants and flowers, sheets, blanket, pillow. They note it's good to have a water-resistant sheet

Below cotton sheets in case of incontinence. It's also good to have a barf bucket, which they call an emesis basin. They also recommend standard music system, ambient speakers, eye shades, having some lamps, some comfortable lighting, maybe throw in some art materials. And they also have rescue medications on hand, which can be anti-anxiety drugs in case someone starts to freak out.

Now, it also notes that the researchers and nursing staff greet the participant. They give standard medical and psychiatric assessments. They check the blood pressure and pulse. They evaluate the participant for suicidality. They conduct a urine toxicology and, if appropriate, a pregnancy test. And they ask the participant about any changes in their medications.

Also, headphones or a speaker and an eye mask, highly recommended. And to keep your thoughts moving, there's this five and a half hour Spotify playlist titled Imperial College of London Psilocybin Clinical Trial Playlist that I hear is very handy. Well, one and only Artie Schmutz wants to know, is it true that vitamin C potentiates psilocybin's hallucinogenic effects?

Not that I've ever, I've never seen anything convincing on that. I know there's anecdotal accounts. Yeah, but nothing that's like definitely doing it this way. No, there was interest in some vitamin B stuff.

Oh. Early on in the 50s, they thought maybe some vitamin Bs were metabolites or had some kind of role in this. Humphrey Osmond was looking into that, but nothing ever came of it. I understand that for a placebo, they'll administer niacin and people get a niacin flush. It's a B vitamin, yeah. We did that as a placebo. I won't do it again. Really? Our two worst

Side effects were both niacin reactions. Were they really? Yeah. Like what? Well, they're very sensitive. They're very fair complexion. They got bright red. Face got real red and they started itching all over. Yeah. It lasted for 30, 40 miserable minutes.

Now, niacin is a B vitamin, vitamin B3, and if taken in high concentrations, like over 50 milligrams, the small blood vessels of the skin can dilate and lead to hot, itchy, red, sweaty skin and a feeling like ants are in your arms, according to one lady who drank a five-hour energy drink during a college road trip and thought that she was dying. It's not subtle.

We knew they were on placebo. It broke the blind. It wasn't an ideal placebo. I felt I needed a placebo condition, and there really isn't a good placebo condition. The Hopkins group likes to take very tiny dosages of the experimental medicine, but if there is anything to microdosing, then...

there might be somewhat of a therapeutic effect even taking a tiny dose as a placebo. So I thought that was kind of confusing the situation. Then we use cornstarch. It's my favorite. That's smart. Although I'm doing something very different for my new study, which is a multi-site study. I'm putting it together with some colleagues where we're going to treat people approaching the end of life in the palliative setting

who are overwhelmed with demoralization. Demoralization is the target symptom. What does that mean exactly? You've lost...

all sense of purpose. Yeah. Meaning has dissipated. You're in a terrible, unsolvable, existential crisis. It's every day. I mean, I feel like I became way less afraid of death. Yeah. After I took that. I was just like, okay, well, that's cool. I'll be fine. Either way, I'll be fine. There's a long tradition amongst indigenous people where these plant compounds are administered to initiate death.

to really explore different realms of consciousness, including, you know, dying. Yeah. And envisioning or envisioning people you've known, either yourself or you know through legend or myth, envisioning that. Yeah.

Well, a lot of people wanted to know about the stoned ape theory. Patrons and human apes, Nick and Melanie Zahn, first time question asker, who asked, I'm curious what your thoughts are about the stoned ape hypothesis. Is there any legitimacy to the hypothesis or is it all bunk? Does it have any truth to it? Is it bogus? That the apes in the wetlands were munching on

mushrooms and they became so inspired with their experience that they had to convey it in some manner to another ape and thus

Yeah. That's a great theory. I don't think there's much proof. And also we should clarify that that's not a theory, but rather a hypothesis by Terence McKenna that language developed relatively quickly in humans because of enhancements to the linguistic centers in the brain from magic mushrooms and plant hallucinations. But most scientists are like a little bit like, Oh,

and they don't give it too much credence. Even some of Dr. Grobe's own work is cited in essays attempting to offer proof, like this recent Psychology Today article that noted, "'Dr. Charles Grobe, "'at the University of California, Los Angeles, "'and colleagues conducted a study in the early 1990s "'exploring the effects of regular ayahuasca use in Brazil. "'They found that individuals "'who drank ayahuasca regularly "'scored higher on neuropsychological tests "'than controls who did not drink this brew.'"

But even the guy quoted in that article, Charlie, our pal Charlie Grobe, isn't convinced. Needs better evidence. What about neurological diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's? Katie Oldman wanted to know about interesting research on psilocybin and MS. Well, this is now being explored. I know the study looking at depression in people with Parkinson's

Same with MS. And also, you know, it's funny. Years ago, particularly regarding MDMA, we get into these endless debates about whether or not MDMA was neurotoxic. And I would argue strenuously that that was not the case. But now we're getting data that would indicate that psychedelics have neuroplastic effects. Really? So what are the implications there to people with neurologic disease?

And for more on this, you can see the 2022 study, From Psychiatry to Neurology, Psychedelics as a Prospective Therapeutics for Neurodegenerative Disorders, which notes optimistically that recent studies with rodents revealed that psychedelics like psilocybin's therapeutic effects might extend beyond treating major depressive disorder and substance use disorder. For example, they write, psychedelics may have efficacy in the treatment and prevention of brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Now, preclinical work shows the ability to induce neuroplasticity, so changing in the brain, and synaptogenesis that deals with synapses. And psychedelics may also act as immunomodulators by reducing these levels of pro-inflammatory markers. So neuroplasticity, helping those synapses, reducing inflammation, current and future psychedeliologists, no pressure, but we're all counting on you.

if you can fit it in your schedule. Speaking of schedules, Sonia Bird asked, how do I figure out the right microdosing? And other microdosing questions came from Brooklyn Barron, Jasmine Alexandra, Kai Kishimoto, Christopher Plubaugh, Vincent Beck-Jones, Sir Spence, Felix, Kelly McCain, and Kevin Quast.

What about when it comes to microdosing? If people are like, I'm going to try it, I'm going to do it anyway. To the on or off, like Marco Santoro wanted to know, once every two days? I've heard different regimens. I've heard like once every four days. Does it just last in your system for a couple days? Yeah.

Yeah, if you look at blood measures, it'll clear, but there's some experiential component that in all likelihood persists. And it's to build up every four days, build up at kind of a steady state level and see if that has any therapeutic components. But again, I'm waiting for the research to come out on this.

We need more mycopsychopharmacologists out there, right? That's like the bottom line. There you go. Several people wanted to know, when it comes to becoming a researcher in this field, where do you see it going, like, legality-wise? Well, I'll tell you what my father told me. I already told you. I'll tell you again. He said, son, you need to get credentials. No one will listen to you unless you get credentials. And for me...

Being his son, there was only one credential he was referring to. I had to go to medical school, which I was avoiding. But then realized I had a greater goal to pursue, and I went for it. Did you ever ask the mushrooms, like, should I become a doctor or what, man? Oh, back in those days, it was a long interlude. Yeah. It was not the time, not the place. Set and setting were not optimal. So I just read. I just read. And I knew there was...

It was a fascinating area. I had some limited experience in the late 60s in college, but then not again for another 20 years. But I read everything I could. And then 20 years on, I had a lot of opportunity to see for myself. Those are very valuable. That being said, I haven't done anything since, you know,

Six years or so. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I don't feel called to it. It's a calling. Yeah. People feel called, not by their friends saying, don't be a wuss, man. No, it's a calling. You feel an instinctive catharsis to some greater force in nature or the spirit realm or whatever you want to call it, that here's this potentially remarkable experience, and you are lucky enough to live in a

time and place where you actually have access and your predecessors, your ancestors for centuries didn't have a clue that these compounds even existed because they were underground. They were totally secret and people who practiced using them were condemned with the harshest punishments of the Inquisition. They would try to wipe out the indigenous people in South Central America and about the midwives.

in Europe, in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, who knew about plants, medicinal plants, the images of the witches flying on their broomstick. Yes. Do you know what that's like? Yes, I do. We had a witch episode recently with rubbing balm on the broomstick and- And then inserting it. Yeah. Yeah. There you have it. Flying high. Flying high. Yeah. But the authorities, all men-

The church authorities, the secular authorities were horrified by this. For more on indigenous perspectives on this, you can see the ethnoecology episode and the witchology episode on indigenous beliefs and the culture of witches and spells. And they murdered millions. This is in the millions, mostly women, mostly plant healers, the midwives. Is that the hardest thing about what you do is getting over...

really conservative views or fears or institutions that want to kind of stifle the research? I haven't run into that. You know, it's funny. For years,

I was cautioned to keep my interest to myself. And then I was at Johns Hopkins for many years. And the chairman there didn't want to hear anything about this. So I kept my interest to myself. You know, every month I'd go to the medical library, look at index medicus, what was new with psychedelics, hallucinogens, or surgical, you know, just to try to keep up that way. But it was seen as a career killer. This would be back in the 70s, 80s.

In the late 70s, we were all asked to present a research paper to our medical school class. So I found a paper of Stan Groff's where he treated terminal cancer patients with anxiety and depression with LSD and DPT. It had phenomenal outcomes. Remarkable. One of the most moving papers I had ever read in the medical literature. So I chose that one. I distilled it down. I put together my talk. I thought I had a great talk. It was succinct at a point.

It was fascinating, and I'm really excited, looking forward to it. What are my classmates and the professors, how are they going to react to this? What are they going to say? What comments will they have? What questions will they ask? Crickets. Nothing. Complete silence. And then I realized, oh, my, I'm not supposed to talk about this. So it really wasn't until I left Hopkins in the late 80s and came out to California and met some like-minded psychiatrists.

And like any researcher, having colleagues or a network of friends in the field can help the cause move along faster and smoother. I did an episode with James Burke of the British series Connections, and he told me in that some really great advice I think of all the time. One plus one equals three. Two people can create things greater than the sum of their parts. It's bad math. It's a great philosophy. Marlene Durez, who was an anthropologist, you know, who really kind of helped me really

realized that it was still possible, even though decades had passed since I had my vision, I had my plan, and nothing could ever come of it because it wasn't the right time. By the early 90s, it was the right time. You had Rick Strassman in University of New Mexico, got permission in 91 to study intravenous DMT. I got permission in 92 to study MDMA and normal volunteers. And then Deborah Mash in University of Miami got permission the following year to study people on Ibogaine.

That was the first opening. And then Francisco Moreno in Arizona in the early 2000s did a very nice proof of concept study using psilocybin for people with refractory OCD. Oh, wow. And then Roland in Baltimore did.

did a study looking at the degree to which psilocybin may facilitate a powerful altered state of consciousness, a powerful transcendent state, mystical state, which were, according to the literature, going back to the 50s and then into the 60s, that having a mystical experience or having a powerful transcendent or transpersonal experience would make it more likely that individual would have a very positive, longstanding therapeutic outcome.

And I'm glad that that hasn't been that huge of a challenge for you career-wise. Do you have any gripes about the job you do? Do you have anything? Is there something that sucks? Oh, well, I have a straight job. I'm a mainstream psychiatrist. I'm the director of a large division of child and adolescent psychiatry. We have a lot of trainees. I really like kids. I was the oldest in a big family, so I grew up around kids.

it was always fun so it was a natural fit for me and meanwhile you know really it was when i got to harbor harbor ucla in 93 that i was really able to move forward with the mdma study the ayahuasca study the next decade it was a psilocybin end of life study and now we hope to have another multi-site psilocybin study yeah is there anything that's that's the hardest part of your job

My commute. Your commute, I was going to ask. Well, what I found, I really, it's imperative that I have...

of people who have got a lot of energy and are very well organized because I'm a bit all over the place. So I need people to keep me on track. And I had a wonderful resident who just moved back to the East Coast and I need to find someone who could take her place. Yeah. Maybe you'll get some emails out of this. What about your favorite thing about what you do? Oh, it's living the dream. You know, I always dreamed of doing this and here I had these remarkable opportunities. It just,

They just felt to me. And I'm very grateful that, you know, the universe has been so kind to me. And I'm really excited about the capacity these compounds have to have a therapeutic impact on people whose conditions do not normally lend themselves to positive effects from standard conventional treatments. Mm-hmm.

And I love also that there's a 700-page textbook that people can find if they want to know a compendium of vetted information. My book. Yeah, exactly. With Jim Grigsby at Colorado. We co-edited a book. Which is amazing. Yeah, yeah. Because there is research out there that I'm sure people want to know. That book has everything. Yeah, amazing. Published by Guilford Press. Got it. We'll link it everywhere. This has just been...

It's such a dream of mine. I've wanted to interview you for so long, since before I even tripped out myself. So this has really been an exciting episode. I enjoyed talking with you and maybe we'll meet again. Yeah, I hope so.

So ask tremendous experts trippy questions. And for more on Dr. Charlie Grobe's work and books, including his Handbook of Medical Hallucinogens, you can see the links in the show notes. And there's more up on our webpage at alieward.com slash ologies slash psychedeliology. Lots of links to lots of studies. You can find us at ologies on X and Instagram. I'm at alieward.com.

Allie has just one L. And I recently put up some new videos on Instagram and TikTok for a concept I'm working on called Holidays Observed with your pod mom, Jarrett Sleeper. So please do go look for those. They're fun. Also, we launched a whole ass new show in its own feed, Smologies. It's available wherever you get podcasts. Each week, we release a new G-rated and shortened episode of Ologies.

They are classroom safe, suitable for all ages and occasions. So we moved our Smologies to their own feed. Have at it. There's more of them. If you're going on a family road trip, if you have friends with kids, please do send them a link. Also, you can become a patron of Ologies at patreon.com slash ologies for as little as a buck a month. Ologies merch available at the link in the show notes. Aaron Talbert admins our Ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional podcast.

Noelle Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is our managing director. And again, frankly, a trip sitter every week doing fact checking, extra research too. Kelly R. Dwyer does the website and piecing together the fractals of audio are Jake Chafee and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme song. And if you stick around until the end.

I tell you a secret. This week, it's a kind of a big one. If you stick around, I said I would tell you a little bit about my own experience tossing 3.4 grams of relatively fresh and potent psilocybin mushrooms down my gullet in an effort to fix my brain. So after my dad died,

you know, it wasn't the easiest time I was going through. I was depressed talking to my psychiatrist about antidepressants and anxiety, stuff like that. And at the time, I wasn't on an antidepressant or a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor or SNRI, which deals with norepinephrine as well. So talking to my psychiatrist, he notes this study showing that psilocybin therapy in a clinical trial was shown to be more effective than Lexapro. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go for it. My psychiatrist sent me

All this information on how to do it, how to conduct it myself. I have a friend who knows a pharmacist who grows these things very well. And I'm, again, the law's listening. It happened in Oregon. But I was really, really, really nervous to do it. I'd never taken any medication.

psychedelics like that. I think I'd probably had like a cap of a mushroom once and like barely felt anything. So I was very worried about throwing up. I was very worried about having an absolute panic attack because sometimes if I smoke too much weed, it's just like I suddenly get terrified of death and I realize that all that lies before us are horrible experiences of pain and disappointment.

So I was afraid of that happening. And I was reading the protocol about how you should journal ahead of time so that you set out your kind of intentions. You know what shit you want to go through and examine or look at. I went whole hog according to Yale Protocol, Imperial College of London, other methodologies like Dr. Groves.

read how they did the experiments, headphones, playlist I talked about, eye mask. Now, the day before I journaled about like what my intentions were, like why was I doing this? What kind of stuff did I want to clear out? And I wanted to get through this feeling that my worth was tied to how helpful I was or how much I was making other people happy. I wanted to get through this anxiety and this perfectionism that is always using like self-criticism to

make me work harder. I wanted to reconnect with happiness in my life and like allow myself to feel happy without fearing that like another shoe was going to drop, which is just anxiety. And I wanted to feel more open to trusting and not feel like, oh, if I, you know, get rejected by someone or if I do one thing wrong, someone's going to be so mad at me forever. I wanted to just trust that people who love me, love me. And that was okay. And

And so I also wanted to process my dad's death. And so I wanted to sort of like connect with how my family relationships are and really feel like I could be myself, right? And so I journaled the day before. I said, I found these, by the way, I found these in an old binder. I said that some of the things I was looking for was comfort and confidence and ease and openness and

and I wanted to make better choices for my body. I love hiking and walking and running. I wanted to do more of it. I wanted to not work more than I work.

And so I went into it with all that. And then the day of, I was super nervous. I ate like a very light breakfast, got in pajamas. Jarrett was my trip sitter. I did have one or two Xanax pills on hand in case I freaked out. Turned out I didn't need them at all. So I'm not going to tell you how to obtain things. Legally, that seems pretty murky, but I will tell you that we had some. They were very potent. Great. We put them in a coffee grinder until they were dust. And then I put them in a glass of tangerine juice, choked it down like it was Metamucil or something. And so then...

I get in pajamas. I have my headphones. I have my mask. Jared's sitting at the foot of the bed and I get in bed and I'm like, okay, I don't feel anything, which goes on for like 45 minutes, right? And then suddenly my hands started to feel kind of tingly and I was like, oh, okay. I started to feel like a little stony baloney and I was like, okay. Jared's like, put the headphones on. Turn it off.

turn on the music, dah, dah, dah. And so then I started to feel a little bit nauseous. And I remember hearing, just tell your body, it's okay, this thing is here to help you. Don't barf it. You worked hard for this. Don't barf it up. It's okay. It's a friend. It's a friend. It's a friend. Like when your dog is like, woo, woo, woo, woo. And you're like, it's the mailman. They have a present for us. So did a little bit of that with myself. It passed, which was cool. I was super afraid of barfing. Didn't at all. And then I put on the mask. I was listening to the music. It was like, woo.

you know, like trippy spa music, but it kind of served like a music in a trailer where it just brings things along. It takes you by the hand and keeps your thoughts moving, which was really helpful, I think. And so the first thing I kind of remember is feeling like I was coming into like a train station and there was just like a sea of faces. Like when you see old movies like Ben-Hur where there's a lot of people in a coliseum, it was like that. It was just like faces that were all like, hey,

it. And I was like, holy shit, these are all my ancestors. This is bonkers. Where'd everyone come from? How did you guys know I was coming? They're like, hey, you're here. You did it. And I was like, whoa, this is, I got a lot of people to catch up with. This is so cool. And then one of them started leading me down into this labyrinth. Everything was kind of like brownstone clay. And they were like, let me show you around. Let me show you around. There were people scattered waving as I was going by. And I was like, oh, this is a trip. And then for a second, I did get scared at something. There was like

some kind of foreboding, scary feeling. And I remembered hearing when that happens, stop and ask, what is this here to teach me? Like go at it with curiosity and stuff like, oh no, this thing's going to suck my brains out. And so I think that I can't remember, but I think that that thing that I encountered was just like, are you sure you should? And I had to tell the thing like, no, I think we're good here. Thank you though. And gosh, I remember being in like a Lisa Frank, like rainbow, this all by the way, had fun.

and eye shades on. So this was all like in my mind's eye. I wasn't looking at anything. So I was having kind of like lucid dreams of a lot of bridges and like a beautiful Japanese garden that was all in rainbows. And then I started talking to dead people. That was pretty nanas. Like,

Dad came through. He's like, hey, what's up? You made it. I was like, dad, what's up? We had a long conversation about how much injustice there is in the world and how he was proud of me for trying to fight, which was really great to hear, even if my brain just made it up.

I also talked to a brother-in-law who had died. A long conversation about how we were both like childless, but an aunt and an uncle who were happy to take care of our nieces and our nephews and not to worry about not having kids. I had this really wild sort of like processing of the fact that I am not going to bear kids and probably won't raise them. If you listen to my mystery surgery, a

few months ago. I got nothing in there that makes babies. Had them all taken out. I've been having health problems with that for over a decade. Anyway, I was having these really great conversations with some sort of

voiceless voice being like, hey, don't worry about it. Some people are here to further their DNA and to keep that going. That's okay. You're here to make stuff and put it in the world, which is going to help other people raise their kids. So don't worry about it. That's not your legacy. DNA is not your legacy. That's also why you have so many great female friends who understand what it's like to want to make things and maybe not prioritize motherhood. So I was like, that actually really helps. Thank you so much for that. So long...

conversations without words and crying. Never cried so much in my life, but like happy tears. Like when you watch videos of someone coming home from a trip and their dog loses their mind recognizing them and is so happy. It was like that kind of crying. Soaking handkerchiefs, Kleenex, just crying in bed. And at one point, you know, Jared, he's sitting at the end of the bed during the beginning of this, but

But my dad and I in this mystical realm were talking about Jared and how much he was so helpful and how much love he showed when my dad was in hospice. And we were talking about like, what a great guy. And then at one point I had to be like, hey, can you leave actually? Because it's just awkward because we're like talking about you.

and he was like, okay, let me know if you need anything. At one point, I did have to go to the bathroom, and I was like, hey, can you help me? And I made very, very sure not to look in the mirror. I heard that bad things happen when you do, although I did peek under my eye mask, and all I could see was I looked like someone who had just been on a 20-hour flight with turbulence. It wasn't a good look, but I remember being like, that's what I should look like right now. Anyway, got back to bed. The whole thing lasted like six hours. I started to come down from it,

and it felt really glowy and peaceful. And I remember sitting on the couch and sort of telling Jared about it, just how much I realized I'm so lucky to be able to do my dreams and I can let myself be happier about that. Also just what a waste of energy and molecules and hormones anxiety is. So here's the deal.

When I came out of it, I was like, all of my problems in life were solved. I've never felt more peaceful and confident and centered and grounded and full of love, right? Here's the thing. That lasts for a bit, right? That lasts for weeks, months. But then when things start to get challenging and you start to forget all those thoughts and how they felt in your body and your mind, and you start picking up old habits, then that can kind of dissipate. And so...

It's a reminder. You have to actively remember that what you learned or what you saw or what you got a chance to feel that good for a bit, what do you have to do to put those things in place? Whether it's having better boundaries, whether it's having more confidence in yourself, whether it's looking on...

people who are difficult in your life with more empathy or with maybe less empathy, depending on the relationship. So it's like you learn how good things can feel and how like your essence is competent and full of love and all of these things. And then it's just a matter of on the outside world, doing all those things that get you to that place. And so that was my experience of it. For me, it was super, super transformative. I have thought of that trip.

every single day for the last couple of years. It's definitely one of the most impactful experiences of my life. I'm so glad that I didn't take sacred ethnobotanical medicines in a setting that was cavalier.

I think that they have a lot that they can teach you about how your own mind works. So just can those thoughts and that reframing can get to you in a much deeper way. Anyway, that is my story about it. Super transformative. I think about it all the time. I'm not afraid of death. I feel like

whatever happens to you, your molecules become something else. Your atoms become something else. Maybe I'll be a frog. Maybe I'll turn into a plane. That would be a random choice, but it could happen. Who knows? But whatever happens, you're just, we're here for a relatively short time. Everyone's just a tiny little baby that wants to be loved. A lot of anger and fear can make people get a bit off track. But the reality

really important thing is that you have to be much more kind to yourself. And when you are that way, you will be kinder to others. So that's my big

rainbow-y mystical trip. I can't stress enough that it's really important to talk to a doctor and do a ton of research. Make sure that you're not at risk for anything like psychosis or anxiety, cardiovascular stuff. Do not go into this lightly is my suggestion if you decide to do something like this. Also journal before, journal after. Just be very careful and no matter what

Just try to take some of those lessons about being kinder to yourself and just like appreciating nature and time and all the things that are good around you. And anyway, I hope this helps. As I say, do the thing, make the project, do the art, text the crush.

cut your hair, wear ugly shoes if you like them. You aren't anybody else and that's great. So you don't have to be. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this two-parter and this extra long secret. If this is your first episode of Listening to Ologies, the secrets are not usually this long. If you've listened to the end, congratulations for sticking it out with me and sleep tight. We all love you. Bye-bye. Hackadermatology. Homeology. Cryptozoology. Let's talk.

Meteorology. That sounds intense.

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